The final week of the regular season was once again a super week filled with amazing matchups and last minute deciders. With SK fighting against the top two teams, this week was exciting for our fans too.

Week 11 was fully packed with high quality matches. Throughout 3 days, SK played Millenium, Alliance, Fnatic, and last but not least, Gambit Gaming.

The new “old” SK

In an older article of our weekly series, we mentioned the “new” Millenium, as they managed to step up their game. They managed to take win after win and look threatening due to their improved gameplay. On the other hand, a lot of people already depreciated SK Gaming due to their performance in the last couple of weeks. Although SK managed to end their streak in week 10, the votes clearly favoured Millenium as the winner.

Viewer predictions aside, this game was going to be a pretty exciting one. Especially with SK surprising everyone, including the players of MIL, with a very aggressive style. Even during SK's winning streak, they were known for having a farm heavy, some would even say weak, early game. This time however, they took over the driver seat early on. From their first blood, which was the result of a bot lane dive combined with a couple of TP's, they managed to claim and hold the lead throughout the whole game. Playing Ahri, Jesiz finally showed us that he is capable of playing assassins. Perfectly timed roams and counter ganks made Kerp's Kassadin with TP look like an immobile farm based champion. Fredy, the other player shining, played a very disruptive Aatrox. His knockups were on point all game long. After a couple of fights just nearby Millenium's base, SK eventually pushed through and finished the game off. A new and aggressive style; a new hope for our fans?

We also picked nRated's brain about this and following games:

"The game showed us that we can have confidence again in our ability to fight head to head. We left out Kassadin and were able to beat them regardless. A hard week of practice and preparation gave us what we needed to get back on track. "

On top of the LCS mountain

Driven by the momentum, SK did not have to wait long for the “real” test: Day 2's games were against EU LCS' pinnacle. The first enemy to beat was the record setting Alliance squad.

SK Gaming picked up their strong gameplay and set the game's pace early on. They dominated Alliance, due to well executed ganks and good objective calls. Although most teams would have struggled to come back from 1-4, Alliance showed why they are Europe's #1 team. Reactive gameplay by them made SK fans struggle, as they slowly managed to come back. The game swung back into SK's hands after they managed to get a baron. From there on they maintained a constant 7k gold lead, just until they overstayed their welcome. Froggen came up with big Xerath play, as he managed to snipe Orianna during a push. Another baron got taken down, but this time Shook sacrificed himself for a beautiful steal. All the plays were in vain though, because Alliance decided to go for a questionable baron, which led to a fight that ended 4-0 in favour of SK and therefore a destroyed Nexus.

Fnatic had recently stepped up their game and they were the first team that made SK struggle in the early game. However the tides turned rather quick, as our amazing objective based gameplay finally found it's way back into the LCS. Kill after kill, SK almost made it look easy. Candy Panda's 5/0/5 Kog stood out, as he just shredded through all enemies with ease. Not so much of a nailbiter, but still a fun game to watch!

nRated stating his opinion:

"Going against Fnatic and Alliance was a whole different story, because we rated both teams ahead of other EU teams, which also showed in their standings going into playoffs. We had a lot of effort figuring out what to do to gain advantage against both teams, but in the end it came down to a solid ingame plan and proper execution. We were able to do both and played constantly good throughout both of the games, which lead to our victories. "

That's what cryptonite does...

After beating the top two teams of the league, the last place contender was going to be an easy win, right? Well, it sounds logical, but Gambit stepped up their game by a lot plus they used to be known as SK's cryptonite.

The champion selection raised a lot of question marks: Diamond got his famous Eve pick and additionally NiQ got his hands on Kassadin. Gambit came in strong. It took no time for them to build up a huge lead. Having snowball reliant champions, this led to a stomp that was painful to watch for any SK fan. Is the cryptonite finally back?

nRated's statement:

"Against Gambit, we had our head in the clouds from the game before. I think we took the game too easy and did not put as much effort into it as we could have. On top of that they chose a very specific strategy to play the game (eve bluepot lvl 2 invade) which gave them a huge lead. Kassadin and Eve were the 2 champs to be able to use that lead more efficiently than other champs would have been able to, so we kinda played into their cards there. Overall an unfortunate game, but let's be honest. We were glad to have the game before playoffs and not lose a series because we get cheesed like this, when it actually really mattered for us."

With that the regular season ended for SK and here are the final standings:

Due to our 4th place we will be facing Millenium in the quarterfinals on Friday, August 8th at 17:00 CEST. Don't forget to tune in and support the boys on their road to claiming one of the World Championship's spots!